La bohème (2001)

An attic studio, on Christmas Eve

Mimi was a charming girl, especially apt to appeal to Rodolphe, the poet and dreamer. Aged twenty-two, she was slight and graceful. Her face reminded one of some sketch of a highborn beauty; its features had marvelous refinement. The hot, impetuous blood of youth coursed through her veins, giving a rosy hue to her clear complexion that had the white, velvety bloom of the camellia. This frail beauty allured Rodolphe. But what wholly served to enchant him were Mimi’s tiny hands that, despite her household duties, she contrived to keep whiter even than those of the Goddess of Ease.

A square in Montmartre, outside the Cafe Momus, the same evening

Gustave Colline the great philosopher, Marcel the great painter, Schaunard the great musician, and Rodolphe the great poet – as they were wont to style themselves – regularly frequent the Cafe Momus where, being inseparable, they were nicknamed the four musketeers. Indeed they always went about together, played together, dined together, often without paying the bill, yet always with a beautiful harmony worthy of the Conservatoire Orchestra.
Mademoiselle Musette was an attractive twenty-year-old girl who, a short time after her arrival in Paris, had become what pretty girls do when they have a fine body, lots of coquetry, some ambition, and no spelling. After having been the joy of suppers in the Latin Quarter for a long time, where she had made a name for herself by singing with a voice continually fresh, if not always true, she suddenly left the Rue de la Harpe. She was not slow in becoming one of the queens of the aristocracy of pleasure and little by little made her way toward that goal of fame which consists in being mentioned in all the Paris newspapers.

Outside a tavern near one of the gates of Paris, late February, two months later

Mimi’s voice seemed to go through Rodolphe’s heart like a death-knell. His love for her was a jealous, fantastic, weird, hysterical love. Scores of times they were on the point of separation. It must be admitted that their existence was a veritable hell-on-earth.

And yet, amid all their tempestuous strife, they mutually agreed to pause for the refreshment and solace afforded by a night of love; but the dawn merely brought with it some unlooked-for battle which served to drive love, terror-struck, away.

Thus (if life it was) did they live; a few happy days alternating with many wretched ones while perpetually awaiting a divorce.

The attic, the next summer

At that period, indeed for some time past, the friends had lived lonely lives. Musette had once more become a sort of semi-official personage; for three or four months Marcel had never seen her.

And Mimi too; no word of her had Rodolphe ever heard, except he talked about her to himself when he was alone. One day, as Marcel furtively kissed a bunch of ribbons that Musette had left behind, he saw Rodolphe hiding away a bonnet, that same pink bonnet which Mimi had forgotten.

‘Good!’ muttered Marcel, ‘he’s as craven-hearted as I.’
‘A merry life yet a terrible one!’